Why I Boomeranged: Returning to the Mission at Palo Alto Networks

Jens Gehring

Major Account Manager

EMEA | Blog | Culture

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Why I Boomeranged: Returning to the Mission at Palo Alto Networks

In the tech world, a "boomerang" is an employee who leaves a company only to return later with a fresh perspective. Jens, a Major Account Manager in Germany, explains why his professional journey led him back to the leader in global cybersecurity and why a unified platform vision is the only way forward.

Turns Out I’m a Boomerang: Why I Came Home

I’m back. Yes, the professional boomerang officially returned to the center of the mission. If you had asked me a few years ago which company I'd be a boomerang for, I honestly would have bet on staying within the world of global cloud hyperscalers. But, as they say, life is life.

For those keeping score, I left Palo Alto Networks in 2021, only to find myself drawn back. My subsequent expedition was an intense, if slightly less glamorous, deep dive into the trenches of highly regulated, on-premises environments, wrestling the Cloud vs. Compliance dragon. This was essential work in understanding complexity, but it hammered home a truth I couldn't shake: Fragmentation is the enemy of security.

The ultimate reason for coming back is simple, yet profoundly complex: the philosophy that "Security is Job 0" just catches me all the time. I realized that to solve the industry’s central problem—how to protect everything without slowing down innovation—I needed to be with the company executing the platform vision at the necessary speed and scale.

The People, The Pace, and The Freedom

What I truly missed was the innovative technology, waking up and helping customers and partners level up their security with real passion. But technology is only half the story; the other half is the people and the culture. Honestly, coming back to this pool of incredibly smart colleagues—people who set an impossibly high skill bar and are relentlessly focused on Disruption and Innovation—is a massive draw. You’re working alongside the best of the best, and that energy is addictive.

And here’s a funny twist: When I first joined Palo Alto Networks back in 2019, fresh from the cloud-native world talking about Code, DevOps, and Cloud, I felt like a complete exotic species. Fast forward to today, and it’s hilarious to see how many cloud-native veterans and hyperscaler experts have followed suit. My return has been filled with meeting new faces who feel incredibly familiar—a true testament to how much the center of the mission has shifted toward the cloud.

The Power of the Tandem: Sales & Engineering

Speaking of smart colleagues: while I might consider myself a super technical guy (for a sales guy, anyway), the true heroes in this whole operation are definitely our Solutions Consultants (SC) and Domain Consultants (DC). I have the incredible luxury of working hand-in-hand as a tandem with Marcus. Our Major Account Manager pairing isn't about solving isolated issues and providing boilerplate solutions; it’s about truly understanding the customer and tackling their complex challenges head-on—a depth of partnership that genuinely stands out.

The other key component is the freedom and trust that defines the culture here. I can work from lower Bavaria, focusing on the toughest global security challenges, because we "drink our own champagne." We use our own leading security solutions to protect our global, distributed workforce. This internal confidence in our Zero Trust platform is what makes "work from anywhere" possible. That professional autonomy and high-bar collaboration allows us to define the future.

The Platform that Demanded a Return

The foundation for my conviction is the platform itself. The ability to integrate massive, disruptive acquisitions and successfully build a unified platform is unique to Palo Alto Networks. It's clear that the platform strategy I believed in is being executed with unparalleled velocity. This scale and foresight confirmed I made the right choice. We’re not just talking theory; we’re executing reality.

We are solving the fundamental problem of complexity, one audacious step at a time. I am thrilled to rejoin this journey at this critical inflection point to contribute to this next chapter of Execution.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish up my morning run, manage the family chaos, and make sure I’m ready for the next round of disruption.